Today's Stichomancy for Kelly Hu

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from U. S. Project Trinity Report by Carl Maag and Steve Rohrer:

directly to ground zero (1).

At 0540 hours, the chief monitor departed from the Base Camp with a military policeman to monitor the entire length of Broadway. They first checked the roadblock at Pennsylvania Avenue and Broadway. Next they drove to the roadblock at Vatican Road and Broadway. Upon the chief monitor's arrival, the west shelter monitor traveled about nine kilometers west on Vatican Road to monitor Guard Post 1 so that the military police could reoccupy the post. The monitoring excursion to Guard Post 1 continued until the chief monitor had returned from Guard Post 2, located 17 kilometers northwest of the Vatican Road roadblock on Broadway (1; 18).

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville:

a great deal quickly than to know anything well: he has no time and but little taste to search things to the bottom. Thus then democratic peoples are grave, because their social and political condition constantly leads them to engage in serious occupations; and they act inconsiderately, because they give but little time and attention to each of these occupations. The habit of inattention must be considered as the greatest bane of the democratic character.

Chapter XVI: Why The National Vanity Of The Americans Is More Restless And Captious Than That Of The English

All free nations are vainglorious, but national pride is not

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson:

belief. The dead retain their taste for a fish diet, enter into copartnery with living fishers, and haunt the reef and the lagoon. The conclusion attributed to the nameless lady of the legend would be reached to-day, under the like circumstances, by ninety per cent of Polynesians: and here I probably understate by one-tenth.

THE FEAST OF FAMINE MARQUESAN MANNERS

I. THE PRIEST'S VIGIL

IN all the land of the tribe was neither fish nor fruit, And the deepest pit of popoi stood empty to the foot. (1)

Ballads

The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon:

I fancy we should all agree with one another on the point in question, if we thus approached it. Ask yourself to which type of the two must he[74] accord, to whom you would entrust a sum of money, make him the guardian of your children, look to find in him a safe and sure depositary of any favour?[75] For my part, I am certain that the very lover addicted to external beauty would himself far sooner have his precious things entrusted to the keeping of one who has the inward beauty of the soul.[76]

[74] He (the master-mistress of my passion).

[75] {kharitas} = "kindly offices," beneficia. Cf. "Ages." iv. 4; "Mem." IV. iv. 17. Al. = delicias, "to deposit some darling

The Symposium